One hundred years ago, Trieste was the chief seaport of the entire Austro-Hungarian empire, but today many people have no idea where it is. This fascinating Italian city on the Adriatic, bordering the former Yugoslavia, has always tantalized Jan Mor One hundred years ago, Trieste was the chief seaport of the entire Austro-Hungarian empire, but today many people have no idea where it is. This fascinating Italian city on the Adriatic, bordering the former Yugoslavia, has always tantalized Jan Morris with its moodiness and melancholy. She has chosen it as the subject of this, her final work, because it was the first city she knew as an adult -- initially as a young soldier at the end of World War II, and later as an elderly woman. This is not only her last book, but in many ways her most complex as well, for Trieste has come to represent her own life with all its hopes, disillusionments, loves and memories. Jan Morris evokes Trieste's modern history -- from the long period of wealth and stability under the Habsburgs, through the ambiguities of Fas-cism and the hardships of the Cold War. She has been going to Trieste for more than half a century and has come to see herself reflected in it: not just her interests and preoccupations -- cities, empires, ships and animals -- but her intimate convictions about such matters as patriotism, sex, civility and kindness. Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is the culmination of a singular career. ...Continua Nascondi

Sometimes when I finish a book I have a strange feeling, sort of a nostalgia, a loss of a world, a "being sorry that the book is over". It was usually good narrative that used to give me that feeling - until I read this book, the only descriptive tra

Sometimes when I finish a book I have a strange feeling, sort of a nostalgia, a loss of a world, a "being sorry that the book is over". It was usually good narrative that used to give me that feeling - until I read this book, the only descriptive travel book that managed to catch my heart and not my brain only.

My position toward this book is privileged, since I was born and raised in Trieste, and even though I haven't been living there for some time it's still my dearest town, the one I know better.As a consequence, places, people, views, feelings I know so well kicked in, in my memory, in such a powerful way that sometimes I felt like I was losing the point of view of the author. But maybe that's what makes the author so remarkable, because this has never happened to me before when reading about Trieste - she really managed to get into the very heart of this city, and report the very feelings it arises. I was particularly impressed by the fact that she perceived what in my opinion are two of the main ghosts that haunt me as a Triestina: hypochondria and in particular the sense of wanting something without knowing what, expecting something, wondering about oneself and the meaning of one's own life.

I'm still wondering about the peculiar concept of nowhereness, that makes the title of the book, and that the author attributes to Trieste. I would like it to be true. And in part it is. I have the impression, though, that the author has somewhat idealized Trieste in this respect, in a way that's typical of visitors that don't actually live there for an extended, continuous time, dealing with the "everyday side" of a place. But maybe she just decided to leave that part out ... who cares after all? At the very end she admits to have portrayed nothing but herself, her Trieste. That's authentic enough.